75% of Enterprises Have ‘Bring Your Own Device’ Policies. What That Means. (Charts)

‘Unwiring Your Enterprise with SAP: Mobile Industry Strategy, Trends and Lessons Learned (A Customer Perspective),’ was the name of the webcast co-hosted by the SAP Community Network and the SAP EcoHub teams this morning.

There was a wealth of fascinating data and Q&A discussion presented with the cornucopia of slides (49, to be exact). If you would like to listen to the webcast and/or download all of the slides, please go here and click ‘Launch Presentation’.

– Bring Your Own Device? It’s real. Nearly three-quarters of companies allow employee-owned smartphones and/or tablets to be used at work, according to Aberdeen data (mix of late 2010 and 2011 surveys). A quarter give employees a whitelist of allowed devices, while almost half let employees bring in and use any device.

– The iPad may be huge in the enterprise (see my list), but companies are interested in tablets of all varieties, including Google Android ones like the Samsung Galaxy Tab, BlackBerry PlayBook and HP webOS-based ones.

Companies need to plan ahead for this diversity by choosing a platform that can handle it. Unfortunately, they haven’t yet: while 80% of corporate smartphones are securely managed, only 30% of tablets are, according to Borg. That’s a problem because tablets are more likely to have sensitive corporate data.

– Mobility has moved beyond the Hype phase of Gartner’s Hype Cycle with real, ROI-producing implementations. These companies, all Sybase/SAP customers, are using mobility in many different ways to transform their processes: P&G, Halliburton, Cox Communications, Home Depot, Citi, Cintas, Rubbermaid, CAT Logistics, Dr. Reddy’s and others.

– Strategic-minded customers like Tellabs want to implement platforms such as Sybase rather than point solutions because it gives them flexibility (in the face of the diversity noted in bullet one) and scalability.

“We looked at a lot of vendors that played in either apps or mobile management,” said Gautam. “When we looked at Sybase, we got excited, because SUP and Afaria together provide a platform that you need to be successful in mobility.”

2 Comments

This is a personal view point, but I find that although there is some good content here, it’s in many ways just a rehash of a sales pitch.

Perhaps if the post had just been without that last few lines which were, in my opinion, gratingly sales pitch I wouldn’t have minded.

It is really interesting that companies are thinking multi device, that is good SCN content! That they are over the moon about using a particular SAP product to deliver than – well is this really the right place to mention that? Possibly – I don’t have the answer to that, I’m just raising the question.

Personally, I don’t think SCN blogs should ever have such “sales” tone to them.

But again, just my thoughts, and I haven’t had much sleep recently so am feeling a bit grumpy…